Menu

Month: February 2016

have you ever held tightly, your figurative knuckles white, to a long held belief, idea or opinion?

i sure have…many times. often to my own detriment.

it’s scary to change your mind. there’s comfort in our beliefs. no matter how big or small, change always brings a level of unease. and let’s face it, we just don’t like to be uncomfortable.

i used to be very prideful in my beliefs about nutrition and health, and i guess to some extent i still am, but there was one area i was completely closed off to…the notion that i somehow needed to supplement my already very healthy, balanced, whole food, mostly plant based diet.

you see, i had been on a journey for about 14 years. a journey to take ownership of my health and my family’s (at least to the extent that i had control). i have no formal education in the area, but i’m a learner. i love scientific evidence and clinical studies. i research, i read, i listen to the experts, i weigh it all, i implement what makes sense to me and then i draw my conclusions based on what i experience. for the most part i remained open to new information and new research, except in that one area. i was convinced beyond a doubt that i could get all the nutrition my body needed from the grocery store, my pitful little garden or the farmer’s market

the problem was, even though i felt better with each little tweak i made to my diet, i still didn’t feel great. my energy was low, my mood was erratic, my emotions unstable, my sleep was poor, i suffered from chronic headaches and although not overweight, i had what felt like a layer of goo that was weighing me down and keeping me just shy of my happy place. i honestly thought this was the best it was going to get and it was all just a result of being in my mid forties.

through the years, i had seen it all…protein shakes, juices, one hit wonder pills and i would scoff in arrogance. a group of friends, who i greatly respected and admired began touting the amazing benefits of yet another product line that was changing their lives. i loved these people, so i kept my scoffing to a minimum, but there was plenty of eye rolling going on and i wanted to tell them to save their money and just go drink a green smoothie. so i watched, waiting for the hype to die down and for them to come to their senses. problem was, it didn’t die down and they were experiencing major breakthroughs in the areas i was struggling most.

i was stubborn…boy was i stubborn. i didn’t think anything that came in a canister or bottle could be anything more than glorified junk, and i wasn’t about to even give it a second of my time, so i let them revel in all of their new found energy and baggy jeans, while i kept drinking my smoothies and eating my beans, popping ibuprofen for my headaches, waking in the wee hours of the morning and barely surviving through the afternoon on copious amounts of coffee.

i stumbled across some information that appealed to my science geek alter ego regarding excessive toxicity. as it turns out, even though our bodies were created to process a certain amount of toxins through our liver, kidneys, lungs and skin, they were not designed to deal with the level of toxicity we are faced with in the modern world, so plan b came into play….trap those nasty suckers in fat cells and hold on for dear life.

then i discovered that even though my organic spinach (among other things) was free of herbicides and pesticides, it offered me no more nourishment than the much cheaper conventionally grown spinach. it, like most other produce, was lacking in the nutrients that spinach once contained in its glory days, as a result of mineral depletion in our soil from all the horrible farming practices in recent decades. i don’t know about you, but i just can’t eat the amount of spinach required to get the nutrition my body needs.

so…toxicity and mineral depletion in our food were sabotaging my attempts to be my healthiest self and all the hemp and kale in the world wasn’t going to change it. but according to my friends, what they had found was the missing link. i decided i owed it to myself to take an objective peek.

i was pleasantly surprised by what i saw. the products were sound and nutritionally balanced and dense. they were backed by years of scientific research by the world’s greatest. there was no junk. the ingredients were obtained from the purest sources from all over the globe where they hadn’t been corrupted. they were minimally and properly processed to retain the highest nutritional content possible.

there was a 2 part process- first, give my body a break for a couple of days through intermittent fasting, while providing it with the proper nourishment and minerals it needed to safely break down toxins so they could be flushed out. second, flood my body with complete, balanced nutrition containing so many of the minerals that my body was so desperately lacking. the only thing that was left to do was try…and to be honest, i was only halfway hopeful and the other half of me was thinking i’d debunk all the hype.

4 days of incorporating this dense nutrition into my regular diet and i was changed. i was sleeping ALL NIGHT LONG. do you know what a gift that is? i wasn’t crashing every afternoon and i wasn’t surviving on coffee. my mood was light, my brain was less foggy and i actually began to enjoy my workouts instead of dreading them because i had so much energy. i soon realized i wasn’t reaching for the ibuprofen every morning and afternoon. after 4 weeks, i had shed that layer of goo that refused to budge. 27 inches from head to toe were gone. i now understand that those were fat cells filled with toxins. they had been weighing me down physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually. i’m so grateful to know that i can keep them from ever taking up residence in my body for an extended period of time again.

2 1/2 years later, and i’m glad i gave myself the freedom to change my mind because i feel younger and better than i did 10 years ago… and i’m quite ok with that.